Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A at a Town Hall Meeting in Carroll, Ohio
Fairfield County Airport
Historical Aircraft Squadron Hangar
Carroll, Ohio

9:16 A.M. EDT

MRS. CHENEY: Well, thank you so much. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Sit down, please.

MRS. CHENEY: That's terrific. What a warm welcome. Do you suppose that
this is Bush-Cheney country? (Applause.)

Well, I have the honor of introducing Dick today because I have known
him for so long. (Laughter.) I have known him since he was 14 years
old. This is true. And his job that summer when I first knew him was
sweeping out the Ben Franklin store in our hometown, in Casper,
Wyoming. (Laughter.) And I've known him through many jobs since. I
have known him since he was digging ditches at the Central Wyoming Fair
and Rodeo Grounds, and I've known him since he was loading bentonite,
100-pound sacks of bentonite onto railroad cars. And I've known him
since he was building power line all across the West, to help pay his
way through school. And I like to tell those stories because when you
grow up working hard, you learn some important lessons. And one of
those lessons is how important it is for the hardworking men and women
of this country to get to keep as much of their paychecks as possible.
(Applause.)

And I've been so honored this past three-and-a-half, four years to
really have a front row seat on history and to watch as our whole
nation rose up to comfort those whose lives were changed forever by
9/11, and to watch our President lead this country, not only to protect
us here at home, but to go on the offense after the terrorists, go on
the offense, which is what we all know we should be doing. (Applause.)

And there are so many issues in this campaign. And I know that you all
feel that way, too. But I'm a mother and I'm a grandmother, and when I
think about this campaign, I think about keeping my children and my
grandchildren safe. And when I think about that, and I ask myself, are
the terrorists going to try to get us again, I say, yes, I know they
will. They'll try. Who do I want standing in the doorway when that
happens? It's not John Kerry and it's not John Edwards. (Applause.)
I'll tell you who it is, it's George Bush and Dick Cheney. (Applause.)

Yesterday, 200 and some 9/11 family members put out a letter. And I
know this hasn't gotten much attention. So I just wanted to read part
of it to you today. They all wrote -- they wrote this letter and then
two -- or the letter, they all signed this letter, and it says:

We speak to you from the heart as citizens from all across the country
and every political stripe. We are Republicans and Democrats, liberals
and conservatives, young and old, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives,
sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, and friends. And we speak from a
profound sense of obligation to those we have lost -- guided by core
principles, President Bush has steadfastly told us who he is, what he
believes, and what he will fight for.

As Americans who have keenly felt the scourge of terrorism, we are
inspired and energized to follow the President's lead, to rise to the
occasion and get the job done. Three years ago, George Bush stood with
us and vowed that he would never forget. We stand with him now.
(Applause.)

Well, our President has been a magnificent leader. And if you don't
mind my saying so, the Vice President is no slouch either. (Applause.)

So, ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Dick Cheney, the Vice President
of the United States. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you. Well,
it's a fact she's known me since I was 14, but she wouldn't go out with
me until I was 17. (Laughter.) But I often tell folks we got married
because Dwight Eisenhower got elected President of the United States.
It was in 1952. I was a youngster living in Lincoln, Nebraska, with my
folks. And Dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service. Eisenhower
got elected, reorganized the government. Dad got shipped to Casper,
Wyoming which is where I met Lynne. We grew up together, went to high
school together, and recently celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary.
(Applause.) I explained to a group of folks the other night that if it
hadn't been for Dwight Eisenhower's election victory, Lynne would have
married somebody else. (Laughter.) And she said, right, and now he'd
be Vice President of the United States. (Laughter and applause.)

We are delighted to be here today with some great members of Congress
from Ohio -- my old friend Mike DeWine. Mike and I served together in
the House. (Applause.) And of course, Bob Ney and Dave Hobson do a
superb job for everybody here in Ohio. (Applause.) And I always feel a
certain bond to Ohio. I haven't talked about it all that much, but my
family actually originated and came through Ohio in the middle of the
19th century. My great grandfather emigrated here as a young man and
settled in Defiance, Ohio, and then enlisted with a -- in the Civil War
with an Ohio regiment, the 21st Ohio, and fought throughout the Civil
War. And my grandfather was born here, and then after the war, in the
1880s, he picked up and moved everybody West. That's how we got to
Nebraska and so forth. But we do claim Ohio roots. And so we're proud
to be back in Ohio today, campaigning across Ohio. And of course, Ohio
is an extraordinarily important state in this election because we're
going to make a very, very important decision on November 2nd.

What I'd like to do this morning, the way we ordinarily handle these
town halls is I make a few remarks up-front, and I don't want to
totally dominate the time, or limit the discussion in any way, but I do
want to talk about a particular issue in terms of the national security
policy and strategy, and then we open it up to questions, and you'll
have an opportunity to ask us questions. Think about questions for
Lynne, too. She's good at it. And I'm always happy to throw a few her
way and -- or make comments so we can focus on the issues you may be
concerned about, as well as those things that we're interested in.

But let me spend a few minutes this morning talking specifically about
what I think is maybe the most important issue with respect to this
campaign. There are a lot of important ones out there -- no question
about it. But for me, it boils down as much as anything to who is going
to be our Commander-in-Chief for the next four years.

I think back in history, there have been times in our history when
we've come up to what I would call watershed events, or major break
points where we suddenly were faced with a new threat, and we had to
develop a whole new national security strategy to deal with it.

We had one of those periods right after World War II -- after our guys
came from the victory in the Pacific and in Europe, and within a matter
of years we were all of a sudden faced with the Cold War, with the
Soviet Union that occupied half of Europe, was nuclear armed, and
became a major threat to the United States. And to deal with that
threat, we developed a new strategy, a policy of deterrence, of holding
the Soviet Union at risk so they were never tempted to launch a strike
against us, a policy of containment. We created the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, we created the Department of Defense, the Central
Intelligence Agency -- all of those things in the late '40s and early
'50s, and then had a structure in place, a strategy, if you will, and
all the various elements of that strategy in place that was then
supported by Republican and Democratic administrations alike for the
next 40 years, until we won the Cold War, and the Soviet Union
collapsed.

I think, in the aftermath of 9/11, we're in a similar period, where
we're once again faced with a new threat -- a threat that we had not
previously had to deal with, at least not as extensive as the one we're
now face with, where we need to develop a new strategy, new concepts,
new institutions to deal with that threat to defend the country and to
guarantee the safety and security of our people and of our kids and
grandkids.

Now, all of that obviously turns around the events of 9/11 that sort
of crystalize the nature of the threat we face. And on that day, we
suffered the worst attack ever on American soil, lost more people than
we lost at Pearl Harbor, some 3,000 mostly innocent civilians killed on
the morning of 9/11 in less than two hours.

And we've since come to understand that the biggest threat we face now
as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of
one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever been used
against us, with a biological agent, or a nuclear weapon, or a chemical
weapon of some kind, able to threaten the lives of hundreds of
thousands of Americans, not just 3,000. And that's the ultimate threat,
and for us to have a strategy that's capable of dealing with that
threat and defeating it, you've got to get your mind around that
concept, that that, in fact, is the possibility that we're faced with
that we have to defeat and overcome and guard against.

And it's not just a matter of a handful of individuals. What we saw on
9/11, of course, was that relatively few people could come into the
country armed with knives and boarding passes and do enormous damage in
New York, and Washington, and obviously in western Pennsylvania where
United Flight 93 went down.

What we've done since then in the policies and strategy the President
has put in place I think has been absolutely crucial to our success.
And I think we have had major successes in the war on terror. First and
foremost, of course, we moved to improve our defenses here at home. We
want to do everything we can to harden the target, to make it tougher
for the terrorists to get at us. And we've done that in a number of
ways, creating the Department of Homeland Security, the biggest
reorganization of the federal government since the Department of
Defense was created 50 years ago; to passing the Patriot Act to give
law enforcement the tools they need to be able to prosecute terrorists,
the same tools that are available already for going against organized
crime and drug traffickers; or Project BioShield that was established
to make it easier for us to develop the resources and the technologies
needed to defend against an attack with biological weapons; a series of
steps that we've taken. And defense is very important.

But the President also correctly made the decision, keeping in mind
the nature of that ultimate threat now, the possibility of a group of
terrorists in the middle of one of our cities with a weapon of mass
destruction of some kind, that a good defense isn't enough, that you
can be successful 999 times out of a thousand, and that one time out of
a thousand they get through can kill you. So you also have to go on
offense -- a crucial decision that he made in the early days of what
has come to be known as the war on terror. (Applause.)

Now, going on offense means a couple of things, first of all, using
the full might and power of the United States to go after the
terrorists, wherever they plot and plan and train and organize, and
we've been doing that. Obviously, you use your intelligence, resources,
you work with other governments as well to do that, but you're also
prepared to use the United States military to go after the terrorists
wherever you find them.

Secondly, and really, this is really the third element after defense
and then going after terrorists, the third element is to go after those
that sponsor terror, after state sponsors of terror, and that's a new
departure. In the past, there had been a tendency to give the states
where terrorists plotted and trained and organized or were supported,
to give them a pass, not hold them to account. The President said no
more. We're never going to do that again. And a key element of our
strategy will be to hold state sponsors of terror to account. Those who
provide sanctuary for terrorists, those who provide them with financing
or training or weapons will be deemed just as guilty as the terrorists
themselves of the acts the terrorists commit.

And based on those basic propositions, obviously, we then launched
into Afghanistan, took down the regime in Afghanistan, got rid of the
Taliban, captured and killed hundreds of al Qaeda, closed the training
camps where some 20,000 terrorists were trained in the late '90s,
including some of those who struck us on 9/11. And having done all of
that, we then moved to stand up a democratically-elected government in
Afghanistan. Why did we do that? Well, it's absolutely essential to
complete the task, to make certain we've got something in place when we
depart that is never again going to be a threat to its neighbors or a
threat to the United States, and never again is going to allow that
area to become a failed state, again a breeding ground for terror, for
the development of weapons of mass destruction. And what we want to put
in place is a democracy. (Applause.)

This is a hard thing to do. We're operating in a part of the world
where democratic practices and principles are relatively unknown,
certainly in Afghanistan. But we set up an interim government. A good
man, Hamid Karzai is the interim President. They then wrote a
constitution and registered 10 million people to vote. And they've just
had, a week ago Saturday, the first free election in the 5,000-year
history of Afghanistan. (Applause.)

By the end of the year, there will be a democratically-elected
government in place in Afghanistan. Does that mean it's over now, we
can walk away? No, it doesn't. This is three yards and a cloud of
dust. There are no touchdown passes in this business. We'll stay as
long as we need to help them train their own security forces, which
we're actively doing, so they can take over responsibility for their
own security, to defeat whatever elements are left of the old terrorist
network in Afghanistan. But we're making significant progress.

Two-and-a-half years ago, John Edwards, my opponent in this campaign,
was wringing his hands saying, oh, Afghanistan is a mess, it's not
going to work, there's going to be chaos there, the Taliban are going
to take over again. This was just six months after we took down the old
Taliban operation. He was dead wrong. Two-and-a-half years later, we've
got an election under their belt now, they're making significant
progress, and it is something we can all be very proud of, and also
know that Afghanistan, as long as we stay on this course and complete
the mission, Afghanistan will never again become a place where there's
a breeding ground for terrorists to come kill 3,000 Americans. A very
important piece of business. (Applause.)

There is a large Ohio fly hanging around up here, so that's what
Lynne's up to. (Laughter.) Got him.

Anyway, on Iraq, different proposition for us, but there we had Saddam
Hussein, a man who started two wars, a man who had previously produced
and used weapons of mass destruction against both the Iranians and
against his own people, the Kurds, back in the late '80s and had a
robust WMD program, certainly up to the Gulf War in '91, a man who had
sponsored terror for 15 years, carried as one of the leading state
sponsors of terror, provided a sanctuary and a safe harbor for Abu
Nidal, for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, had a relationship with the al
Qaeda organization. We were concerned specifically about the
possibility -- again, remembering that big threat, the possible
linkage, if you will, between terrorists and WMD that Iraq under Saddam
Hussein represented a point where that could -- that nexus might most
likely occur. So it was absolutely essential to do what we did, and the
world is a lot safer and a lot better off today with Saddam Hussein in
jail and his government out of business. (Applause.)

Now, same proposition in Iraq. We're -- got an interim government in
place. They held their first national assembly. They'll hold their
first elections in January, and by the end of next year, they should
have a democratically elected government in place in Iraq -- again,
hard thing to do. Our adversaries, the remnants of the old regime and
terrorists like Mr. Zarqawi, who has just recently announced now that
he's pledged fealty and loyalty to Osama bin Laden, they will do
everything they can to interrupt the flow of process -- progress
towards those elections, because they know that we've intercepted
messages from Zarqawi for bin Laden and the al Qaeda types, that once
the Iraqis have a democratically-elected government in place that's
capable of controlling the sovereign territory of Iraq, they're
through. He said in one of his messages he'll have to pack his bags and
move on. And we hope we get him before he gets a chance to pack his
bags. (Applause.)

And we're working to stand up and train Iraqi forces. We'll have
125,000 trained and equipped Iraqi forces in place by the end of this
year, and we'll keep continuing that process until we're well over
200,000 sometime next year, again, so they can take on the
responsibility for providing security in Iraq.

Byproduct to all of this, of course, was Moammar Ghadafi in Libya
watched as we launched into Iraq and then contacted us. There were nine
months of negotiations, and then five days after we dug Saddam Hussein
out of his hole in Northern Iraq, Ghadafi went public and announced he
was going to give up all of his WMD, specifically his aspirations to
acquire nuclear weapons, because he'd been out on the black market and
purchased uranium, centrifuges to enrich uranium, a design for a
nuclear weapon, and spent millions of dollars on that program. And then
he saw what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and he thought better of it.
And when he thought better of it, he did not call the United Nations.
He called George Bush and Tony Blair. (Applause.)

Final point was that the black market network, run by a man named
A.Q. Khan that had been responsible for taking this technology and
making it available, not only to Libya but also to North Korea and
Iran, has been put out of business. He's under house arrest in
Pakistan, and his illegal nuclear supplier network has been shut down.
That also was a major plus from the standpoint of the President's
policy. (Applause.)

Now, the key to this enterprise, obviously, I would say there are two
keys. One has been the President's steadfast leadership, his
willingness to make some very tough decisions, and to hang tough in
there and do the right thing, without regard to what it might mean in
terms of the political pressures of the moment or standing in the polls
or elections or anything else. He knows what needs to be done and he's
prepared to do it.

The other key ingredient, obviously, in our success, has been the
magnificent performance of our men and women in uniform. They've done a
superb job. (Applause.)

Now, the choice we've got to make, with respect to November 2nd, is to
pick a Commander-in-Chief who will, I think, continue that same tough,
forward-leaning, aggressive policy that says we're going to go after
the terrorists and we're going to go after those who support terror and
we're going to go over there and do it on their turf, instead of having
to fight them here in the United States. (Applause.)

Now, John Kerry would lead you to believe that he has the same kind of
view that President Bush does, that he would be a tough, aggressive
individual, leader, Commander-in-Chief, to pursue the global war on
terror. I don't believe it. I don't think there's any evidence to
support the proposition that he would, in fact, do that. And let me
talk for a few minutes, if I can, about Senator Kerry's record, because
it's there for anybody who wants to see.

One of the things he's done in this campaign is everything he can to
obscure his record, to get us to ignore his 20 years in the United
States Senate. And I am not, in what I am about to say, challenging his
patriotism. That's always their response. You question his record, and
say, well, this is what you voted 20 times -- or several times during
20 years in the United States Senate, and his people stand up and say,
how dare you question his patriotism. No, we question his judgment. His
judgment is flawed. (Applause.)

And if you look at his record, the first time he ran for Congress, he
did so on the basis that we should not commit U.S. forces without U.N.
authorization. That was back in the 1970s. In 1984, when he ran for the
Senate, he ran on a platform of cutting or eliminating most of the
major weapon systems that President Reagan had acquired, or wanted to
acquire, that were crucial to winning the Cold War and our military
operations then. In 1993, when he was on the intelligence committee in
the aftermath of the first bombing of the World Trade Center, it looks
like he did not attend a single meeting of the Senate intelligence
committee for the year after the terrorist strike on the Trade Center,
and did offer an amendment to the intelligence budget that would have
cut several billion dollars out of our intelligence operation -- an
amendment so radical that even Ted Kennedy wouldn't support it.
(Laughter.) And that's saying something, you're right, there.
(Laughter.)

Another key element here is he talked -- in the first debate this year
he talked about a "global test," the deployment of U.S. forces, or
preemptive use of military force required you to meet some kind of
"global test." And you can speculate, well, what does he mean by a
"global test"? And look back at a time when presumably virtually every
conceivable condition that he might possibly contemplate was met, and
that was the first Gulf crisis in 1990 and '91, when I was Secretary of
Defense. I remember it fairly well. The fact was that we had 34 nations
who committed troops alongside the United States. The U.N. Security
Council had voted unanimously to authorize the use of force. The issue
that came before us in the Congress of the United States was, shall the
President be authorized to use military force as leader of this
alliance and coalition to expel Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi forces
from Kuwait, after they invaded Kuwait, occupied Kuwait and stood
poised to dominate the Persian Gulf.

And John Kerry voted "no." I can't think of a time, when you go back
over that history, when he was ever comfortable with the use of U.S.
military force. He doesn't appear to have been. And the one time he
voted for it, of course, was this time around, when we asked
authorization from the Congress to use force to remove Saddam Hussein
and he voted for it. But then he got down the road, the question was
whether or not he'd authorize funding the $87 billion, and, of course,
we got one of the all-time classic political responses from a
candidate, "Well, I actually voted for it, before I voted against it."
(Laughter.) Which everybody has seen.

I asked myself, why did he do that, why would he vote to commit the
troops to combat and then, when the question was whether or not we'd
provide them with the equipment and the weapons and ammunition, spare
parts and so forth they needed, why would he vote "no"? There were only
four members of the United States Senate who did that -- he was one,
John Edwards was one -- two out of the four were Senators Kerry and
Edwards. Well, it turns out, if you look at the timetable of what was
happening in the Democratic primaries at that point, Howard Dean was
running strong -- the anti-war candidate, he was opposed to any U.S.
involvement whatsoever in this operation. And I think Senators Kerry
and Edwards believed they were falling behind in the contest for the
Democratic nomination and they had to adopt an anti-war posture. So
when the question came up of supporting the troops, they voted against
the troops -- people they'd sent into combat, they'd authorized those
folks to be sent into combat, and voted "no" and wouldn't support them.
And I think it was because of the fact that they were feeling the
political heat from Howard Dean.

And that automatically leads to the question, well, if they can't
stand the heat from Howard Dean and the Democratic primary, how the
heck can they stand up to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? (Applause.)

Now, Senator Kerry's on the tube these days -- of course, we're
getting down to the closing days of the campaign and we're seeing a
couple of things. One is, I think without question, he's come across --
at least, to me and Lynne -- as somebody who will say absolutely
anything to get elected. There isn't anything he won't say. (Applause.)
And of course, now he's working the old tried and true issue on Social
Security. I've been involved -- I guess the first campaign I ever
worked in was 1966, so that's almost 40 years, one way or another -- as
a candidate and a White House Chief of Staff and a whole different
capacity -- six times as a member of Congress. I have trouble
remembering elections, when there wasn't an effort down in the closing
days for the opposition to try to scare everybody by saying, oh my
gosh, if you elect a Republican, something bad is going to happen to
Social Security.

It's a myth. It's absolutely wrong. It's, I think, a move of
desperation on their part to suggest that. It's the kind of scare
tactics we've heard so often in the past. It's simply not true, but
we've seen other examples of it. We've seen the last few days he said,
well, gee, if you elect George Bush, there's going to be a draft. No.
There are two people in the United States Congress who have sponsored
legislation to restore the draft: Charlie Rangel, from New York, and
Fritz Hollings, from South Carolina, both Democrats. There was a vote
in the House the other day, where the leadership brought it up and
said, all right, you guys want to have a draft, let's vote on it. And
the vote was over 400 to 2. (Laughter.) Charlie Rangel didn't even
vote for his own bill. (Applause.)

So for John Kerry to be running around talking about a draft is
another one of these urban legends. It's an absolute myth. Anybody
who's been involved with the U.S. military and the all-volunteer force
knows what a magnificent organization it is. I had the privilege, when
I was Secretary of Defense, of working with what I think is the finest
military, obviously, in the world -- maybe in the history of the world
-- and it's that all-volunteer force out there. If there were a need to
increase the size of the military, you've got to remember we had --
when I was Secretary, we had 2.1 million active duty personnel; we've
got about 1.4 million today. We did it with an all-volunteer force
then; you could easily do it with an all-volunteer force now. But
nobody is suggesting that that's the right answer. What we need to do
is reconfigure our forces, take advantage of the lessons that we're
learning, reposition them around the world -- we don't need the same
kind of force now we had back during the Cold War. We need a force now
that's capable of prosecuting the war on terror. It's going to look
different. And we're working to build all of that.

And for John Kerry to suggest that a draft is something that anybody
is seriously considering -- other than Charlie Rangel, who won't even
vote for it himself -- is just -- it's another sign of desperation, I
think; another sign that here's a man who will say anything to try to
get elected.

And we're going to see now, in the final two weeks of this campaign, I
think even more evidence of that. I think as they see that the
President is running strong, that they're not making any headway, that
we'll see perhaps even more desperate claims than those we've already
seen today. But I think the key for us here is to remember that, in
fact, we have an opportunity with George Bush, with a man who has
demonstrated now for three-and-a-half years that he has what it takes
to be the kind of wartime leader we need, that with the tremendous
ability and capability I think of the U.S. military, with the
resilience of the American people, there isn't any reason in the world
why we can't surmount this challenge, just like we have all those
others in our 200-and-some year history. (Applause.)

I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever, having carefully analyzed the
records of our opponents, Senators Kerry and Edwards, no evidence
whatsoever to lead me to believe that Senator Kerry would be the kind
of effective Commander-in-Chief that we need if we're going to
successfully prosecute the war on terror.

One final point, and then I'll stop and respond to questions. He was
asked about his view of the war on the terror and his concept of what
the strategy ought to be, and so forth, going forward there, a week ago
Sunday, in The New York Times -- it ran in The Sunday Times Magazine,
by a reporter who has covered him in the campaign. And he said, well,
what he hoped to be able to do was to get terrorism back to the place
where it used to be, where it was just a nuisance. And then he
contrasted that, or compared it, if you will, to the way you would
manage illegal gambling or prostitution of local city governments. I
read that and I scratched my head and I thought, well, what do they
mean, when terrorism was only a nuisance?

If you go back prior to 9/11, presumably, there's some point back
there where he would deem terrorism was only a nuisance. And I said,
well, what about four years ago? October 2000, when the USS Cole was
hit and we lost 17 sailors and nearly lost the ship off Yemen. Or you
go back to 1998, six years ago, when the al Qaeda simultaneously blew
up two of our embassies in East Africa and killed hundreds of people,
including a number of Americans. Or 1993, when they hit the first World
Trade Center and tried to bring it down and failed, but injured maybe a
thousand people, killed several. Or maybe it was 1988, December, when
Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Or maybe 1983, when in the spring they set off a truck bomb outside our
embassy in Beirut; and then that fall, a suicide bomber drove a truck
loaded with explosives into the bottom of a floor of a building, took
down the entire structure and killed 241 Marines.

Now, I can't think of any one of those incidents as being qualified or
classified as a "nuisance." We cannot afford ever to look upon
international terror as a "nuisance." (Applause.)

Somebody who's got that mind set, that's a pre-9/11 mind set, you
know, if we can just get back there, to where we were before 9/11,
everything is going to be okay. No, it's not. This is a global war; not
only have they hit the United States, but they hit Madrid and
Casablanca and Mombassa and East Africa and Istanbul and Riyadh and
Jakarta and Bali and Jakarta, again, and Beslan, in Southern Russia.
All of those attacks since they struck us on 9/11. Somebody whose mind
is around the concept of treating terrorism or getting terrorism back
to the point where it's a nuisance like illegal gambling and
prostitution strikes me as somebody whose head is in fundamentally the
wrong place to be prosecuting the war on terror. (Applause.)

So it's been my enormous privilege to serve alongside George Bush
these last four years. I've enjoyed it immensely. I've been proud to
serve with him. He's been a great President. And with all of your help
and support, on November 2nd we'll make absolutely certain he continues
to be our Commander-in-Chief for the next four years. (Applause.)

Now, we've got some people around here with microphones, and they're
in the attractive white T-shirts -- they are pretty attractive,
actually -- you ought to see what we make them wear most of the time.
(Laughter.) They've got microphones and if you've got a question or a
comment you'd like to offer up, just get their attention and they'll
come over to you and you can have an opportunity to participate in this
affair. So we've got somebody here -- can we have somebody with a
microphone get down here where -- somebody right over here, number
five.

Q Mr. Vice President, we've been hearing a lot on the local news about
the Senator has hired a team of lawyers to contest the outcome of the
election already. I'm a little concerned about voter fraud and the
things that are going on. Are we going to have a repeat of 2000? Or how
do you anticipate this is all going to play out the next couple of
weeks?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm one of those who believes that our
margin is going to bigger this time than 537 votes in Florida.
(Applause.)

And I would hope that we don't have a contested election. If there is
any kind of fraud out there of any kind by anybody, it obviously needs
to be prosecuted. It can't be allowed to happen. We need to protect the
sanctity of the electoral process. It's one of the unique and
distinguishing features of our civilization. But the -- as I say, I'm
optimistic. I'm hopeful that, in fact, we're going to have a good,
solid, hard-fought, clean election and that people will all have the
opportunity to participate and should, that everybody's vote will be
counted and that there won't be anybody in the process who's trying to
intimidate folks or to register people who aren't eligible, et cetera.

So I know that everybody is watching it. The best way, I think, to
guarantee the safety and sanctity of the process is to have the kind of
public focus on it that is clearly there now. And I think that's most
likely to guarantee us a fair outcome. And, as I say, I'm fairly
optimistic that we're going to get the right answer.

Yes.

Q Yes, Mr. Vice President, we have seen a reduction in the crime rate
in the United States. And the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the
organization that represents the vast majority of law enforcement
officers across the United States, has recently endorsed the
Bush-Cheney team. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, sir. (Applause.)

Q And I can tell you in the last 30 years of being in law enforcement,
there has never been an administration that has been more supportive of
the law enforcement community in this country, and we thank you.
(Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, sir. We're delighted to have the
endorsement of the organization. And it's important for all of us to
remember given the nature of the conflict we're now engaged in, what
happened here on 9/11, and the importance of safety and security of the
nation going forward, that people on the front line include our local
law enforcement personnel, our fire departments and first responders.
It's a different kind of conflict than we've ever had to deal with
before. So we're delighted to have the endorsement of the organization,
and we'll continue to do everything we can to earn it.

Back here, yes.

Q Good morning, Mr. Vice President. It's a great honor. I appreciate
the opportunity. John Kerry has stated on several occasions that the
United States had Osama bin Laden cornered at Tora Bora in Afghanistan,
and then in his characterization that we diverted our resources and
troops to Iraq and outsourced that particular mission or job to the
warlords of Afghanistan. I personally doubt the veracity of his
statement and I would just like you to respond to that, please.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I happen to agree with you. (Laughter.) No, the
facts are -- and this issue was addressed just yesterday or the day
before by General Tommy Franks. General Franks was the CENTCOM
commander; he was the four-star in charge of or operations for that
whole part of the globe, including both Afghanistan and Iraq. He was
the man in charge of those operations. He was the one who developed and
executed the plans that worked in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and he
came just within the last 24 or 48 hours and said, it's absolute
garbage. It's just not true.

The fact of the matter is that we get speculation about where Osama
bin Laden might have been, but we went down and went in and took down a
great many bad guys, and killed a lot of other members of al Qaeda.
There is no evidence that there was any diminution of the effort in
Afghanistan because of what we did in Iraq. We clearly are capable of
doing both operations. We did both operations. The man in charge of
both operations, who is a highly decorated, distinguished veteran of
over 30 years service in the United States military says basically it's
hogwash. And he was there; he ought to know. (Applause.)

Q Good morning, Mr. Vice President. Thanks for coming to Lancaster,
Ohio, and Fairfield County. As we listen to these debates and we hear
the debatable issues of health care and Social Security and all those
such things, I see such little difference in the parties, I don't
expect that to be a difference in the election. However, I have a fear
that in the year 2004, we're going to find out whether we have a moral
majority in this country. And I implore you and the President to
continue the next two weeks to show us the difference.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: All right. (Applause.) Thank you, sir.

Somebody over here, number four.

Q Mrs. Cheney, my dad was a New York City fireman, and it would be
great politically if that letter you read could be on a full-page ad in
USA Today between now and the election. (Applause.) And the other
question I have is, where is Arnold rallying the young people of
America? We need him. It's close. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, the letter is a remarkable letter. Lynne
read only a small portion of it. But it is available I guess, on the
Internet.

MRS. CHENEY: I'll just say that the campaign released it to the press.
So maybe you could call your local newspaper and see if it can't get
some coverage, because it is really so eloquent, so remarkable. Or call
a national newspaper. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: But that is a good idea to make certain that it is
seen because it's one of the most eloquent testimonials I've ever seen
from the families who lost people on 9/11 and why they're supporting
the President.

With respect to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor has been great.
He, of course, went to New York and gave, I thought, a great speech at
the convention in New York City. I thought it was superb. (Applause.)
There's nothing like having an immigrant, a naturalized American
citizen who could tell the story about what it was like to come to the
United States, his dream of being able to come here someday and what
he'd been able to accomplish since he got here. It's a testimonial, I
think, to the greatness of the nation. And we've been delighted with
the Governor's support. He has been superb. He also has his hands full
in California, not in a political sense, but in a gubernatorial sense,
governing out there. And we've been very pleased with the help that he
has provided us.

Yes.

Q Mr. Vice President, it's obviously that Kerry had less than
honorable discharge from the service. Isn't there a way to find his
military records, and find out what kind of discharge he got, and if he
attended the two years active duty drills he was supposed to take?
(Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I'm not sure I want to go there. (Laughter.) We
have refrained in the Bush campaign from in any way criticizing Senator
Kerry's military service. We just haven't done it. There are a lot of
people out there who are debating his service. That's their
prerogative. They've all earned the right to speak and express their
views. But as -- we think just from the standpoint of wisdom, we've
stayed away from any comment with respect to his military record. And
that's where I'm going to leave it today. I don't know any of the
details other than what I've seen in the press. And I wouldn't comment
further.

Q Mr. Vice President, in the last week or two, we've seen evidence of
a released prisoner from Guantanamo showing up again in Pakistan. In
light of that kind of situation, how are we ever going to deal with the
situation of those folks who we've got incarcerated in Guantanamo?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the way to think about what we've
got in Guantanamo is there are a number of people incarcerated down
there. They are defined under the Geneva Convention and so forth as
illegal combatants. That is to say they were picked up -- they're
terrorists. They were involved in terrorist activities. They weren't
in compliance with the laws of warfare, in terms of wearing uniforms
and functioning the way military organizations are supposed to
function. A lot of them were captured in places like Afghanistan and
elsewhere. And they are being held, in effect, and treated as prisoners
of war even though the Geneva Convention doesn't specifically apply to
their situation.

And when you're in the midst of conflict like this, it's when you have
enemy personnel that come into your possession, and it has historically
been the case that you hold them for the duration of the conflict. You
don't want to put them out so they can go back to the battlefield
again. And we have had a couple of instances where people that were
released, that were believed not to be dangerous have, in fact, found
their way back onto the battlefield in the Middle East. And it's a
judgment call. Many of them are citizens of other countries. Some of
those countries have asked for them to be returned. In some cases,
they've made commitments that they would be either held incarcerated,
or brought to trial in those countries. In some cases, that hasn't
happened obviously. So it's a tough call to make, but we continue to do
everything we can to hold those that we need -- believe to be held,
that they ought to stay prisoners as long as this conflict is under
way. A number of them will be prosecuted under the military tribunals
that have been authorized by the President. And again, that's all in
manner that's consistent with the traditional practice going back prior
to World War II. So I think we're handling it about right. And we do
have to make some difficult judgments there. And obviously, in a couple
of cases people were let go that probably should have been held.

MODERATOR: Mr. Vice President, we have time for just one more
question.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thanks, Dave. Somebody back here.

Q Okay, I'd like to first thank you. In 2003, I got my Eagle Scout,
and I thank you for sending me a congratulations letter.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good. (Laughter and applause.)

Q And it's not uncommon today for people to graduate from college with
loans of $50,000 to $100,000. How do you and President Bush plan on
controlling the price of college tuition that has risen much faster
than inflation over the past 10 years?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, we've tried to do a number of things. We've
significantly increased Pell grants to make it possible to cover more
students than we have in past. It has actually gone -- used to be about
4 million people we could cover under the program, now it's up 5
million plus. We've increased the upper ceiling on Pell grants by $300
a year to cover the extra added costs of tuition. We've provided a
special $1,000 grant to students at a certain level who take tough
courses in high school to prepare themselves for college, a series of
steps like that. We also have supported the concept of lifetime savings
accounts, which would allow people to set aside money tax-free that
could be used for education or other purposes at any point along the
line. These are all concepts and programs that are either in place, or
that are being actively supported by the administration. We believe
very strongly in the importance of education. I read a statistic the
other day that something like 83 percent of the fastest growing
professions in the United States require training now beyond high
school.

The other thing we want to do -- and this is an important activity for
the federal government, as well, too, is when the President came to
town, to Washington, and his top legislative priority was No Child Left
Behind. That was HR 1. He learned based on his service as Governor of
Texas that the public school system wasn't working the way it should
be. We were just passing a lot of students through from grade to grade
without them acquiring the skills they needed. And Lynne and I both
went to public schools. We're beneficiaries of a great public school
education. That ought to be available for everybody. What the President
did was get No Child Left Behind passed. It was supported on a
bipartisan basis. It established standards and testing and
accountability so we know how individual schools are doing. I think, as
I recall here in Ohio, 83 percent of your schools this last year met
the test of significant -- substantial improvement, which is very good
for the state of Ohio. And it makes us -- what we want to do now is
take that same concept that we've applied at the elementary level and
move it to secondary, so that we made certain our high schools are
functioning, that people coming out of high school have all the
requisite talent and skill that you would expect them to have after
having had that kind of good public education, that they acquire the
necessary experience in math and reading so they can take the jobs that
will be developed in the 21st century, and that we lay the groundwork
wherever possible for them to go on and acquire whatever additional
technical or professional education they need in order to be able to
take maximum advantage of the opportunities that do exist in the United
States.

And I know education is expensive. It is for everybody. Of course,
when I went to school at the University of Wyoming, tuition was 96
bucks a semester. (Laughter.) On the other hand, I was only making a
buck and a quarter an hour, so it evened out. But it is a top priority
for us. Education has been at the forefront of the President's
concerns. It's key in terms of jobs, in terms of our economy, in terms
of the basic fundamental well-being of the American people. So it will
continue to be a top priority for us.

And let me go back here for one last question. I love your shirt --
Buckeyes For Bush.

Q Thank you. (Applause.) Mr. Vice President, and, Lynne, I really
don't have a question. I have a comment. You've been a personal hero of
mine from 1991, when I heard you speak on national defense. And what
you said that day came true under Bill Clinton. And I love President
Bush. He makes such great decisions, and the first great one he made
was asking you to be Vice President. (Applause.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Lynne said I better quit while I'm
ahead. (Laughter.) But thank you very much. We appreciate this.

Well, again, let us -- we want to thank all of you for being here
today. This is an extraordinarily important election. We're all
enormously privileged as Americans to be able to participate in this
process. And come November 2nd, I know Ohio is going to be in the
winning column for Bush-Cheney.